October 30, 2018 D.H. Riley A Nova DemocraciaThe second round of the electoral farce – which marked a Pyrrhic victory for the fascist Jair Bolsonaro as the new president of the semicolony Brazil – was once again the largest electoral boycott in recent history. There were more than 42 million people who, having registered to vote, did not go to the polls, or voted void or blank. The number of the boycott, however, is even greater and incalculable, since one must add those adults who had their electoral titles canceled and the young people of 16 to 18 years who did not issue the document out of discredit and repudiation of the farcical process.The number was a new record. In the first round we had already registered what was, at the time, the biggest boycott in history, with 40 million people boycotting. In the second round, the number grows by 2 million. According to the TSE calculation, more than 30% of those eligible to vote simply did not choose any of the candidates if abstaining, voting void or blank. Abstentions alone amount to about 20% of the electorate.The number of those who boycotted the electoral farce, 30%, is very close to the amount of votes that Jair Bolsonaro accumulated in first place. The latter did not surpass 39%, even with a wide electoral campaign and half-day coverage of the monopoly of the press.WORKERS RELIEVE THEIR INDIGNATION AT THE POLLSWorkers spontaneously destroyed several ballot boxes in these elections. In addition to the cases that occurred in the first round – already reported in the following article – other actions occurred in the second round.More than ten urns were destroyed in Sorocaba, interior of SP, on the day of the second round of elections (October 28). A group of people broke into the rooms of the Humberto Campos School and destroyed the polls. At least ten ballot boxes were rendered useless.In Fortaleza, CE, an urn was burned on the same day. The protester was a man of unknown age who was casting his vote. He used flammable material to perform the action. According to the TRE, the votes were not lost.WHERE DOES THIS ELECTORAL BOYCOTT LEAD US?The campaign of electoral boycott promoted by several people’s movements fulfilled this year an important role. The campaign gathered the dissatisfaction and spontaneous rejection of a large part of the people to the electoral process and politicized it, returning to the people with the way forward: the Democratic Revolution.The historic electoral boycott of the two rounds of the election implies a hard blow to false democracy and warns that the popular masses are calling for a new society and a new system to emerge from the popular struggle and by other means, as well as impel the crisis within the dominant classes.These 42 million people who boycott the elections demonstrate that, in general, they want a new regime and have already realized that it is impossible to achieve it by false democracy; are waiting for a new path that will guarantee their deepest desires and rights.

Democracy and Class Struggle say - Life is Made of Courage - Keywords for the battle we know that is coming but it will not be led by the PT but by a rising people many who did not vote at all in the election of Bolsonaro - there were many not on the electoral register - some 42 million people were invisible.It is the people that they did not see that will destroy Bolsonaro and his fascist clique.Representative Democracy is a Democracy of Bourgeois Factions not Proletarian Democracy.Proletarian Democracy in 21st Century must be Direct DemocracyVISIT: ENGLISH EDITIONS OF NOVA DEMOCRACIA

Democracy and Class Struggle says provocations by the US in South China Sea will suit Xi Xingping just fine and create a massive tidal wave of Chinese Nationalism.Anyone who has seen Chinese Nationalism in action will realize what a hostage to fortune Xi Xingping is making - we hope Trump is just an empty windbag orthere will be war.Chinese President Xi Jinping told military officials responsible for the disputed South China Sea to be better “prepared for war” as tensions with the US are rising. Beijing may be bracing for a worst-case scenario with the US.
Xi made the remarkably blunt remarks last week as he was meeting the Southern Theatre Command, the military officials responsible for one of China’s five strategic war zones.The calls were made on Thursday as part of his four-day visit to Guangdong province, but the Chinese state media reported them only on Friday
Source RT

In the current era of uncontrolled ‘market forces' as preached by the present government and other supporters of neo-liberalism, confiscating land and other forms of property has taken on a more sinister dimension. It has been noted that witchcraft accusations and cleansing rituals are particularly rife in areas earmarked for game management and game ranching, for tourism, and for occupation by potential big landowners…Some chiefs and headmen profit from selling considerable portions of their domain to international investors, and fomenting social disruption in the village facilitates the transaction. A divided village will not have the power to unite and oppose attempts to having the land they cultivate being taken over by someone else.s a matter of fact, the villagers are at times, so engaged in accusing each other of practicing witchcraft that they hardly notice that they are being dispossessed and they have turned into squatters on their own ancestral lands. (Hinfelaar 2007: 238)

Democracy and Class Struggle agrees that Chinese Labour relations have entered into a new more dangerous phase - the closure of the Maoist Sites Epoch PioneerRed Reference and Mao Zedong Flag is a sign of the new phase,

A group of workers at Jasic Technology in Shenzhen have been protesting about inhumane conditions, unfair dismissal and harassment. Matters came to a head when they attempted to organise a factory-level trade union in July.They are facing severe repressive measures by the authorities, with over 60 workers and supporters detained. Four workers were formally arrested on September 3 and four supporters and an NGO worker are under criminal detention.The state-controlled Xinhua news agency placed the blame squarely on civil society organisations and foreign forces in an August 24 article, while failing to mention that the workers were protesting due to labour rights violations and state violence.Instead, it alleged that the Dagongzhe Workers’ Centre (DGZ), a Shenzhen-based labour organisation that works in partnership with Hong Kong-based Worker Empowerment, fanned the protest.On August 27, Worker Empowerment released a statement clarifying that neither it nor DGZ organised or financially supported the workers. The statement also expressed hope that “the rights and safety of all participants [in the Jasic dispute] are legally and reasonably taken care of as soon as possible”.This is not the first time authorities have pointed the finger at labour NGOs. In December 2015, following a coordinated round-up and temporary detention of labour activists and workers in Guangdong province, four staff from another labour NGO were formally charged. Three were given suspended prison sentences and the other was jailed for 21 months.The authorities are again moving against labour NGOs in China who receive external funding. Around five weeks ago, DGZ staff member Fu Changguo and the organisation’s legal official, Huang Qingnan, were detained, according to information from Worker Empowerment. Huang was released on bail, but Fu remains detained, accused of “creating a disturbance in a public place”.As labour researchers, we share Worker Empowerment’s concerns and believe the accusations in the Xinhua report are groundless.It alleged that Fu encouraged people to attend the protest outside the Jasic plant on July 22 and circulated news on DGZ’s WeChat platform for staff and workers. In fact, DGZ merely asked supporters to travel to Pingshan and bear witness to developments outside the Jasic plant.Moreover, the Jasic struggle had already attracted widespread attention, and news has been widely shared across social media by workers, retired party cadres, university students, academics and concerned individuals. Other social platforms following the dispute far exceed DGZ’s WeChat group in membership and reach.Yet, only Fu has been accused of “radicalising the incident”. Furthermore, even though Fu was at the scene of the incident, Xinhua acknowledged he was merely an observer, a far cry from “creating a disturbance in a public place, causing serious disorder”.Huang has not been involved in the Jasic incident. As a former coordinator of DGZ, he has assisted numerous workers claiming legal compensation for industrial disease and injury. Many of these workers were abandoned by their employers after being injured. In 2007, Huang suffered a knife attack, reported in both domestic and international media, while promoting the Labour Contract Law. TThe attack left him with permanent injuries to his left leg.Afterwards, Huang returned to his hometown in Fujian Province, making occasional visits to Shenzhen to fulfil his minimal duties for DGZ. We understand that he was picked up by police in Fujian, 800km from Jasic, then taken to be held in detention in Shenzhen.Jasic workers demand re-instatement, protest state violenceThe Xinhua article correctly recognises that Jasic workers wish to establish a democratic union, in accordance with China’s Trade Union Law. They first sought help from the Pingshan District Trade Union on May 10 by submitting a petition letter on unsatisfactory working conditions and the demand to set up a factory-level union. It was signed by 28 Jasic employees.The district-level trade union initially offered advice to workers, but when management refused to accommodate them, the union failed to defend workers who were beaten up, arrested and unfairly dismissed, and by July it was using its own social media platform to condemn workers’ attempts to win reinstatement. This was key in the workers’ decision to seek wider public support.

It appears that support from a non-state actor carries the risk of being accused of instigating or escalating industrial action. If so, we are now entering a period of even tighter surveillance and control over workers and activists seeking to defend workers’ rights in accordance with the law. At the same time, there is little evidence of official institutions such as Communist Party-led trade unions stepping in to help workers.The Xinhua article singles out DGZ and Worker Empowerment, framing them as instigators of the Jasic struggle. It seems this accusation is meant to delegitimise and criminalise both organisations and the workers’ demands.We believe the report deliberately misleads the public to divert attention from the state violence the Jasic workers and their supporters have faced. To bring a just end to the dispute, authorities should release all those detained without delay and facilitate the establishment of a democratic factory-level trade union with elected representatives accountable to all Jasic workers.Tim Pringle is a senior lecturer in the Department of Development Studies, SOAS, at the University of London. Anita Chan is co-editor of The China Journal in the Department of Political and Social Change at Australian National University. Joel Andreas, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, also contributed to this articleSOURCE: https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2164817/chinas-labour-relations-have-entered-dangerous-new-phase

China’s impressive growth is based on cheap labor, high levels of investment, and Western exports. Can it survive?Since the 1980s, China’s economy has grown rapidly with an average annual growth rate of real GDP at about 10 percent. Today, the Chinese economy is the world’s second largest and is set to surpass the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy by around 2015 when measured by purchasing power parity. However, various economic, social, and ecological contradictions have accumulated in recent years and China’s current model of capitalism is unlikely to remain viable beyond the medium term (defined as the next ten to fifteen years).China’s economic growth has been based on the intense exploitation of a large cheap labor force, unusually high investment rates, and exports to western markets. As the global capitalist economy struggles with stagnation and crisis, China’s exports will achieve at best sluggish growth in the coming years.Investment has risen to about 50 percent of China’s GDP. The excess investment has reduced the rates of return on capital and threatens to undermine China’s financial system as much of the investment has been financed by bank loans and other forms of debt. A more sustainable level investment is probably around 30 percent of GDP. However, to lower the investment by about 20 percent of GDP, household consumption needs to rise by a similar magnitude. Most households depend on wages as their main source of income. Thus, for household consumption to rise by 20 percent of GDP, a large portion of the national income (between 15 and 20 percent of China’s GDP) needs to be redistributed from the capitalists to the workers. This is likely to face strong resistance from China’s capitalist class.In this context, a serious debate has emerged in Chinese society. A growing number of Chinese intellectuals and social activists argue that China needs to rethink its free market-oriented economic reform. Public ownership of the means of production needs to be revived and income and wealth need to be redistributed from the wealthy to the poor in order to enhance social stability.These intellectuals and activists are known as the “New Left.” Many of them are also known as the “Maoists” as they tend to have a sympathetic perspective on China’s Maoist socialist past.In the early 2000s, the Maoist social base was limited to older state sector workers who suffered the most during the privatization in the 1990s. But in recent years, with rising economic and social inequality, the Maoists have gained support among the urban middle class as well as a newer generation of the Chinese working class.Partly encouraged by the growing influence of Maoism, Bo Xilai attempted a moderate social reform agenda while he was the Party Secretary of the city of Chongqing. Bo Xilai cracked down on organized crimes with connections to the local capitalists, increased investments on social housing, and promoted “simultaneous developments” of state owned and private enterprises (rather than outright privatization as has been practiced in many other parts of China).Therefore, the recent purge of Bo Xilai is politically significant.It suggests that the “Communist Party” is determined to push forward with further free market-oriented economic reforms without serious social reform. While such a course might benefit Chinese capitalists in the short run, it is set to further intensify China’s various contradictions and potentially prepare the conditions for a general social explosion in the not very distant future.Historical experience from Brazil, South Korea, and Poland suggested that when a country’s non-agricultural labor force increased to more than 70 percent of the total labor force, the working class was likely to emerge as a powerful political and social force, demanding higher wages, social welfare, and political democracy. China’s non-agricultural labor force currently accounts for about 60 percent of the total labor force and its share has been rising at an annual rate of about 1 percent. At this rate, China’s non-agricultural share of labor force could exceed the critical threshold of 70 percent by around 2020. If China’s current capitalist system fails to accommodate Chinese workers’ demands by then, a general economic and political crisis will be highly likely.Chinese capitalist development has taken place at the cost of massive environmental degradation. According to the latest Living Planet Report, China’s ecological footprint is already more than twice as much as China’s own bio-capacity. China’s has some of the world’s most polluted cities and about 40 percent of China’s land has already been degraded. According to a report prepared by the “2030 Water Resources Group,” China could face a water deficit that amounts to 25 percent of China’s projected water demand by 2030.Thus, in the next one or two decades, economic, social, and ecological crises are likely to converge in China, leading to the downfall of China’s current capitalist model. How the crises will be resolved will have enormous implications not only for China’s future but also for the entire planet.Dr. Minqi Li is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Utah. He is the author of The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy (Monthly Review Press, 2009). SEE ALSO:https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.com/2018/08/china-depends-on-neo-liberal-capitalism.htmlhttps://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.com/2017/05/resetting-global-system-president-xi.html

Richard Wolff reviews Trade Wars and Migration from his perspective Marx Engels Lenin Stalin and Lee Carter - the Red Scare did not work in Virginia - Lee Carter elected as Socialist despite Red Scare Republican Tactics.There are many invisible people like Lee Carter and the People he represents - it gives us hope for a New America.Lee Carter must break from Democratic Party and not be co-opted by them and build a New Party.

Courage - Life is Made of Courage - Keywords for the battle we know that is coming but it will not be led by the PT but by a rising people many who did not vote at all in the election of Bolsonaro - many were not on the electoral register - some 40 million people who were invisible.It is the people that they did not see that will destroy Bolsonaro and his fascist clique.

We, the members of civil society and more than 40 rights organisations including women’s rights organisations, dalit rights organisations, adivasi mass organisations, legal aid and research organisations, environmental groups, trade unions, students etc., have come together to register our condemnation of the continued hounding and reprisals by the state of human rights activists arrested allegedly in the BhimaKoregaon case. Stretching to the very last day of the temporary relief of house arrest granted by the Supreme Court vide order dated September 28, 2018 in RomilaThapar&Ors. v. Union of India, the Sessions court in Pune rejected the bail applications for Advocate SudhaBharadwaj, Arun Ferreira and Vernon Gonsalves, who were arrested allegedly in the BhimaKoregaon case on August 28, 2018. Lawyer and activist ArunFerriera and Vernon Gonsalves have been taken under custody by the Pune police yesterday, on October 26 and have produced before the Pune Sessions Court today, which has granted remand until November 6. Advocate SudhaBharadwaj’s has also been taken under custody a short while back by the Pune police, who were stationed at her house since late last night. October 26 witnessed high power drama in various courts- Pune trial court, Mumbai High Court and the Supreme Court -hearing and delivering orders on various pleas ranging from rejecting bail application of SudhaBharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves and ArunFerriera by the Pune Sessions Court; Mumbai High Court rejecting a plea for the extension of house arrest of ArunFerriera and Vernon Gonsalves and adjournment of the hearing until October 31 on application for quashing of FIR of Father Stan Swamy and until November 1, of GautamNavlakha, and AnandTeltumde; Supreme Court hearing the review petition filed by RomilaThapar&Ors. v. Union of India from the Supreme Court’s order dated September 28, which was rejected earlier today. Background of arrests, RomilaThapar’s petition and the court cases After the arrests and simultaneous raids on the houses of activists Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, SudhaBhardwaj, GautamNavlakha and VarvaraRao; and raids on houses of Stan Swamy, AnandTeltumbde, KranthiTekula, Susan Abraham, KV Kumaranath, Prof. Satyanarayana on August 28, an urgent petition was filed by five eminent personalities in the Supreme Court on the question of arbitrariness of the arrest and curbing of dissent. Justice Chandrachud while delivering a dissenting judgement (2:1) on September 28, laid bare the entire petition and discussed various points of law rigorously, striking at the heart of the matter — the utter violation of due process as per the provisions of the CrPC and the UAPA and the attack on dissent. The majority judgement authored by Justice Khanwilkar and signed by the then Chief Justice DeepkaMisra, in all but a few lines noted that the Pune Police is responsible and can be trusted to carry out the investigation following due process. Although the dissenting judgment grants the demand for an SIT, the majority judgement extended the house arrest of the five rights activist for four weeks allowing them to seek other remedial measures in the trail court and the Supreme Court. A review petition on the above judgement was filed in the Supreme Court which was listed for a chamber hearing incidentally on October 26- the last day of the house arrest. While no order was passed on October 26 leaving much ambiguity, the review petition now stands rejected by an order passed earlier today. Similarly, the order, rejecting the bail application for SudhaBharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves and ArunFerriera was filed in the Pune session court was also delivered on the last day. A matter concerning the extension of house arrest of ArunFerriera and Vernon Gonsalves was also adjourned on the last day of the house arrest without grant of interim relief. As a result, this gave no time to the three activists - SudhaBharadwaj, ArunFerriera and Vernon Gonsalves - to seek legal recourse. In case of Gautam Navlakha, Delhi High Court had released him from house arrest on October 1. The petition seeking the quashing of the FIR against Gautam Navlakha, Anand Teltumde and Father Stan Sway also came up before the Bombay high Court of October 26. The Bombay high Court has granted interim relief against arrest to Navlakha and Teltumbde until Novemeber 1 and Swamy until October 31. Hyderabad High Court on October 25 extended the house arrest of VaraVaraRao for three weeks allowing him to move local court in Pune and Mumbai High Court for quashing of FIR by Pune police. This is not the first spate of attack by the State on rights activists. The first to be arrested were eight worker of Reliance Infrastructure in the month of January by the Anti terrorist Squad (ATS) in relation to the BhimaKoregaon violence. They have been charged under various section of draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and are yet to get bail even after months of being under custody. Incidentally, the chargesheet filed in their case finds no mention of the BhimaKoregaon violence! On June 6, 2018, five others were arrested —SudhirDhawale, the editor of the progressive Marathi magazine Vidrohi and one of the organiser of the Bhima-KoregaonShaurya Din PrernaAbhiyan; Professor ShomaSen, the then head of the Department of English, Nagpur University; Advocate SurendraGadling, general secretary, Indian Association of People’s Lawyers; Mahesh Raut, anti-displacement activist from Bharat Jan Andolan and a former fellow at the Prime Minister’s Rural Development (PMRD); and Rona Wilson, public relations secretary, Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners. The planned raids and subsequent arrest of June 6 were similar to the ones in August 28. On October 24, the Bombay High Court quashed the Pune Sessions Court order granting extension of 90 days to the state to file the charge sheet in the matter pursuant to arrests on 6th June 2018 of the earlier five activists - Professor ShomaSen, Advocate SurendraGadling, Mahesh Raut, Rona Wilson and SudhirDhawale, paving way for the possibility of their bail. A stay was granted until November 1, to allow the state to appeal from the order. The state has filed an SLP challenging the order in the Supreme Court which is fixed for hearing on Monday. Motive of State- targeting activists The State has played foul in the entire investigation. To begin with no action has been taken against the right wing leaders- ShambajiBhide and MilindEkbote- against whom the first FIR(2/2018) was filed for inciting violence. State sponsored news channel displayed the ‘sensitive’, ‘controversial’ letters allegedly written by Bharadwaj to some comrade in national channel even before they made it to the court rooms. Joint Commissioner of Police in one instance and ADG (Law and Order) in the other, breaking all codes of neutrality and discretion- conducted press conference where all the alleged letters which have formed the basis of the investigation were handed out to the media organizations, paving way for a vicious media trial. Even the dissenting judgement of Justice Chandrachud chided the Pune police for the purported and disturbing intention to carry out a media trial against the accused. Interestingly, BhimaKoregaon and the FIR under which the activists are arrested are not even the important factors in the case anymore. Very slyly, these alleged letters have been used to slap the draconian UAPA against the activists who have been striving to bring out the anti-people policies of the present ruling government, BJP. Condemnation of bail rejections and arrests We, at MRSD question the grounds of rejection of bail despite there being no substantial evidence against activists ArunFerriera, Vernon Gonsalves and SudhaBhardwaj. We extend our continued and whole hearted support to the activists facing the reprisals. The manner in which the state has been hellbent on depriving the liberty of the activists, while openly violating every norm of natural justice throughout the investigation in the case, is appalling and an assault on democracy. On the other hand, there is a clear attempt to divert attention from investigation into the role of Hindutva groups in attacking the BhimaKoregaon visitors and prosecuting the real culprits, which has been pushed to the sidelines to protect the perpetrators of violence. We urge the conscientious citizens and media to highlight the lapses in the investigation and the criminalisation of these activists by the state. We emphatically condemn the continued use of the draconian UAPA in a concerted manner to target dissenting and inconvenient voices alike. UAPA, an act that came into existence in 1967, has no place in a democratic society. UAPA has been regularly used against Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis, Activists, Lawyers, Journalists etc. in order to spread a reign of terror. UAPA especially makes it difficult to get bail and has stringent provisions, on account of which people can be perpetually imprisoned without any trial. It is a draconian law that can be invoked on vague and untrue grounds. We would like to draw the attention of media organisations to the BhimaKoregaon Judicial commission hearings that are going on to investigate the failures of Maharashtra government in being able to control the violence that ensued after alleged Hindutva groups attacked Dalit Bahujans at BhimaKoregaon memorial on January 1. We would like to strongly urge the Maharashtra government to take stringent immediate action on the original FIR lodged in the BhimaKoregaon case which implicates Hindutva leaders ManoharBhide and MilindEkbote and to stop the diversionary tactics being employed to falsely implicate and target activists with long standing credibility working for the rights of the people. In the wake of news reports of the police having dropped criminal cases against the two Hindutva leaders for rioting in the past, there is a strong suspicion of foul play to protect these individuals with criminal antecedents. We Demand - 1. The immediate and unconditional release of democratic rights activists, workers, families falsely arrested in alleged connection to the violence at BhimaKoregaon 2. That the false UAPA charges against the activists, workers, Dalits, Muslims, Adivasis be dropped 3. That the real culprits of the BhimaKoregaon violence, Hindutva leaders ManoharBhide and MilindEkbote who instigated and planned the attacks on visitors to BhimaKoregaon, be arrested and prosecuted under law 4. That the draconian UAPA be repealed 5. That the attacks, criminalisation and reprisals by the state on dissenting voices in civil society, democratic rights activists and to stifle constitutional freedoms be stopped immediately.MUMBAI RISES TO SAVE DEMOCRACY Participating organisations 1. People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) 2. Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR), 3. Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) 4.. New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI) 5. Trade Union Centre of India (TUCI) 6. Student Islamic Organisation (SIO), 7. AmbedkarPeriyarPhule Study Circle (APPSC), IIT 8. Police Reforms Watch 9. LokrajSangathan 10. Spark magazine11. National Confederation of Human Rights Organisations (NCHRO)13. Forum Against Oppression of Women (FAOW) 14. LABIA- A Queer Feminist LBT Collective15. JagrutKamgarManch (JKM)16. Majlis17. Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy (IMSD)18. Women against Sexual Violence and State repression (WSS) 19. Bharat BachaoAndolan (BBA) 20. Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF21. People’s Commission on Shrinking Democratic Spaces (PCSDS)22. Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) 23. Cause Lawyers Alliance24. National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM)25. KashtakariSanghatna, district Palghar.26. Sarvahara Jan Andolan, district Raighad 27. ShramikMuktiSanghatna, district Thane. 28. Human Rights Defenders Alert (HRDA) 29. Innocence Network 30. Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) 31. Students of St. Xavier's 32. Students Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS) students 33. FTII Alumni 34. The Leaflet35. Awaaz-E-Niswaan 36. Bastar Solidarity Network (BSN) 37. Satyashodhak Feminist Collective 38. Indian Christian Women's Movement - Mumbai Chapter 39. NivarraHakkSurakshaSamiti40. JagrutKashtakariSanghatana, Raigad 41. Justice and Peace Commission and Others Speakers: Noted Rights' activist Teesta Setalvad, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) Adv Nilima Dutta, Trustee, Lawyers Collective Police reforms activist Dolphy D'souza, Police Reforms Watch Adv Susan Abraham, advocate practicing in Bombay High Court

Democracy and Class Struggle had profound respect for E P Thompson's historical studies even if he was not of our political tradition and we my have had some differences with him - but we miss him and his passion for history.

The Washington Post reported in 2016 on the use by Saudi Arabia of U.S.-supplied white phosphurus so it's not clear just what Khashoggi would have been exposing if he, indeed, was about to obtain documentary evidence.But the idea that British intelligence would have been aware of the plot against Khashoggi raises the question of why the the journalist wasn't warned?

More information that British as well as US Intelligence knew about murder of Khashoggi but did not advise him to go to Saudi Embassy in Turkey.British and US governments also in cover up of Saudi use of chemical weapons in Yemen.Statement from Wales on YemenYr Aflonyddwch Mawr says the situation in the Yemen is dire beyond description and it gets little publicity in UK - British and US Intelligence knew at least three weeks before that the Saudis planned to murder Khashoggi because he was going to reveal use of Chemical Weapons by the Saudis in Yemen - they could have stopped his murder for his planned exposure of Saudis chemical weapons use in Yemen but chose not to do so.SEE ALSOhttps://greatunrest2012.blogspot.com/2018/10/wales-stands-with-yemen.html

Democracy and Class Strugglesays the current situation on Europe has no room for optimism - the NATO strategy is more dangerous than ever - realists not pessimists see War breaking out by accident or design as a real possibility

RUSSIA SHOULD MAKE NO CONCESSIONS TO USA AND NATO - THAT FATAL ROAD HAS BEEN TAKEN BEFORE AT RUSSIA'S EXPENSE

NEW DELHI:Activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira, whose bail applications were rejected by a special court in Pune on Friday, have been sent to police custody till November 6. Sudha Bharadwaj, the third activist whose bail plea was dismissed, was arrested from her house in Faridabad by a team of Pune police and will also be in their custody till November 6.These three activists, along with two others - P Vara Vara Rao and Gautam Navlakha - for alleged links to Maoists during country-wide raids by the Pune police on August 28 and put under house arrest following a Supreme Court order.After the arrest of the activists in August, eminent historian Romila Thapar had moved a petition in the Supreme Court saying the police crackdown is linked to the left-leaning viewpoints of the activists. That plea was rejected by the top court today.The prosecution had argued against granting bail to the three activists and said they have enough "corroborative evidence" against the trio to prove their links with CPI (Maoist) in various ways such as "raising funds" for the banned outfit and helping them recruit the cadre.The nationwide raids in which the activists were arrested had been launched as part an investigation into a conclave, Elgar Parishad, that was held in Bhima Koregaon near Pune on December 31 last year.The police claimed the speeches given by some activists at the conclave set the stage for violence next day in the village of Bhima Koregaon, where one person was killed in an inter-caste clash.The Supreme Court ordered the police to keep the five activists under house arrest and not to send them to jails. The arrest of Gautam Navlakha had been quashed by Delhi High Court and Vara Vara Rao's bail application is pending before the Hyderabad High Court.

An excerpt fromThey Thought They Were FreeThe Germans, 1933-45Milton MayerBut Then It Was Too Late"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing."What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it."This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter."You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time.""Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. ‘One had no time to think. There was so much going on.’""Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head."How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might."Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late.""Yes," I said."You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty."Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have."But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait."But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D."And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined."Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair."What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say."I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn’t an anti-Nazi. He was just—a judge. In ’42 or ’43, early ’43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an ‘Aryan’ woman. This was ‘race injury,’ something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a ‘nonracial’ offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party ‘processing’ which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the ‘nonracial’ charge, in the judge’s opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom.""And the judge?""Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience—a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That’s how I heard about it.) After the ’44 Putschthey arrested him. After that, I don’t know."I said nothing."Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was ‘defeatism.’ You assumed that there were lists of those who would be ‘dealt with’ later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a ‘victory orgy’ to ‘take care of’ those who thought that their ‘treasonable attitude’ had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty."Once the war began, the government could do anything ‘necessary’ to win it; so it was with the ‘final solution of the Jewish problem,’ which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its ‘necessities’ gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany’s losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."